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down on the farm

Oh wow, it’s been longer than I thought. We’ve had all kinds of craziness around here. We headed up north to spend Thanksgiving with family (holy cow did we have a good time) and got home just in time to put the finishing touches on our congregation’s Christmas party, bite our nails as Hayden tried out for Heritage’s production of Phantom of the Opera (first ever high school production in Arizona), and get Taryn out the door for winter formal. Once I get all my photos in some kind of order, I’ll share.

So now, we’re buzzing around trying to get our house ready for Christmas in between holiday parties, concerts, and other various and sundry obligations. I’m not a big holiday decorator, but I do like decorating for Christmas — nothing crazy, just a few things here and there. In my imaginary world, I was going to have it all done by this morning. Umm, no. So you’ll have to wait for those pictures as well. Don’t hold your breath, you may not see them until New Years.

Our biggest news comes from the homestead front. A few days before we left for Thanksgiving, we received word from the state that the quarantine on our property had been officially lifted. HURRAY! We quickly made arrangements to pick up our new goats. With that, we pleased to introduce the newest residents at Blissful Homestead — Strawberry Shortcake, Flame Princess, and Daisy.

Strawberry and Princess love playing on their chicken poop covered table, and Daisy is sweet as sweet can be. All come from awesome milking lines and we’re really optimistic. Strawberry recently miscarried a kid, but there’s a possibility that she is still pregnant. We’re going to try and have an ultrasound done to find out for sure. Princess may be with kid as well, we should have the pregnancy test results back tomorrow. Daisy, well, she’s too young to be going on any dates, but by this spring, she should be good to go.

All the animals seem to be getting along great. It was kind of funny watching the chickens after the goats moved in. They didn’t quite know what to think. Oddly, the goats and rabbits really seem to like each other.

The little chickens are getting huge. Pretty soon they’ll be ready to move in with the rest of the flock. They’re not quite a skittish as they used to be and will even pose for a picture or two.

We did run into a bit of trouble this week. We had a few nights where we dropped below freezing. The peas, beets, and broccoli, seemed to fare the best.

The lettuce and swiss chard did okay.

The tomatoes, corn, and zucchini — not so much.

Pretty sad looking. Oh well, we’re happy to chalk it up to another learning experience. We planted a little too late this year — timing is everything.

Speaking of timing — I better run — that count down to Christmas clock is really moving fast.